Iole de Freitas

Iole Antunes de Freitas (born 1945) is a Brazilian sculptor, engraver and installation artist.

She was born in Belo Horizonte, Minas Gerais in 1945. She moved to Rio de Janeiro in her youth and studied at the School of Industrial Design (ESDI) at the Rio de Janeiro State University from 1964 to 1965. During the 1970s she worked in Milan as a designer in the Olivetti's Corporate Image Studio under architect Hans von Klier. She began to develop and exhibit her work from 1973, working with experimental photography and Super 8 film. Her major theme was the representation of the body.^[1] The next year she held a solo exhibition of her photography at the Modern Art Museum of Rio de Janeiro. She also held a solo exhibition in Milan. In 1975 she participated in the IX Biennial of Paris.

In the 1980s she returned to Brazil, adopting sculpture as her medium. She uses materials such as wire, fabric, steel, copper, stone and water to create her works. In 1986 she received the Fulbright-Capes Scholarship for research at MoMA in New York. She directed the National Institute of Fine Arts Funarte from 1987 to 1989. She received the Bolsa Vitae de Artes Plásticas in 1991. She is a professor of sculpture at the Escola de Artes Visuais do Parque Lage.^[1]

Her works can be found in the Contemporary Art Museum of Rio Grande do Sul, the Museum of Modern Art, Rio de Janeiro, the São Paulo Museum of Modern Art, the National Museum of Fine Arts and the Art Museum of Pampulha.^[1] Her work for Casa Daros Para que servem as paredes do museu?, was featured for the cover story of the 90th issue of ArtNexus magazine.^[2]

She counts Cézanne, Degas, Picasso and Tatlin among her influences.

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